Luo Ji thinking IPO three times was suspended A shares "knowledge payment first share" difficult to produce where is the difficulty

Beijing News Shell Financial News (reporter Luo Yidan) Recently, when the Shell financial reporter browsed the Shenzhen Stock Exchange GEM issuance and listing review information disclosure website, he found that the IPO review status of Beijing Thinking Creation Information Technology Co., Ltd. has been changed to "suspended", the reason is that the financial information recorded in the company's IPO application documents has expired and needs to be submitted additionally.

Thinking Creation, the operating entity of the knowledge payment business of Luo Zhenyu, the main speaker of "Luo Ji Thinking", has been on the road to the IPO of Thinking Creation for more than 18 months since it officially submitted a prospectus to the Shenzhen Stock Exchange on September 25, 2020, and intends to be listed on the ChiNext Board. In contrast, Visualization Technology and Tengyuan Cobalt, which were accepted at almost the same time as Thinking Creation, have been successfully listed.

In fact, this is not the first time that the IPO process of Thinking Creation has pressed the "pause" button. On April 1, 2021 and September 30, 2021, Thinking Creation was also suspended by the Shenzhen Stock Exchange twice for the same reason, until it was restored after updating its financial information.

Shell financial reporter browsed and found that the Shenzhen Stock Exchange in the three rounds of inquiry letters involved the previous subsidiary of Thinking Creation Cool Teenager, and in the latest inquiry letter, the positioning of Thinking Creation in the ChiNext Board has become the primary issue.

If you want to be listed on the Gem Board, how can the performance growth and core technology innovation be

According to the prospectus, Thinking Creation is online, providing lifelong learners with courses, listening books and e-books and other products through platforms such as the "Get" App and the "Luo Ji Thinking" WeChat public account, and providing general education and skills training services for lifelong learners through "Get College" and "Friends of Time" New Year's Eve speeches offline.

Since the submission of the prospectus, Thinking Creation has gone through three rounds of audit inquiry letters. Shell financial reporter browsed and found that the first question in the latest inquiry letter of the Shenzhen Stock Exchange is about the positioning of thinking creatures in the ChiNext board. The company is required to further explain the specific embodiment of performance growth, whether the core technology is innovative, and whether it is different from the general technology of the industry.

In this regard, Thinking Creator said that from 2018 to the first half of 2021, its online business ARPPU (average income of paid users) was 188.55 yuan / person, 231.93 yuan / person, 289.15 yuan / person and 418.14 yuan / person, ARPPU was significantly improved, the number of paid users in the high consumption range increased significantly, and there was still a large room for improvement in the payment rate.

On April 8, Shell financial reporter logged in to get the App and found that the price of its top popular courses was roughly as follows: 300 lectures or so courses between 199 yuan and 299 yuan, and courses within 10 lectures fluctuated around 39 yuan. According to a rough estimate of the data released by Thinking Creation, the average paying user of the app has purchased more than 400 lectures.

At present, the same industry companies that are comparable to the creation of thinking include Zhihu, Fan Deng Reading Club, Ba Jiu Ling, Chalk Technology and so on. For comparison with other companies in the industry, Thinking Creator graphically stated in the reply letter that its product ecology covers knowledge search tools, e-books, paper books, audio courses, offline courses, etc., and these different products can be distributed to users through algorithm recommendations, thereby enhancing users' willingness to pay.

Image source: Thinking Creation's reply letter to the third round of audit inquiry letter

In addition, Shell financial reporters noted that in the three rounds of inquiry letters, the regulators mentioned that the cool teenager who was founded in 2017 and had previously been a subsidiary of Thinking Creation.

Cool Teenager is the main operator of the education brand "Teenager Get", mainly for 5-15-year-old teenagers, providing knowledge payment, training camp, live class three types of services, but it has been in a state of loss since its inception. It is worth noting that due to its operating conditions not meeting expectations, in September 2018, Thinking Creation introduced Zhang Quanling as the chairman of the board by granting equity and was responsible for integrating and adjusting the business direction of Cool Youth, and Zhang Quanling also sold "Quanling's Language Class" online.

However, with the landing of the "double reduction" policy, the cool teenager did not reverse the loss situation, and the creation of thinking began to gradually divest this "non-performing asset". The latest reply letter shows that in August 2021, Thinking Creation has transferred all of its shares in Cool Teen to Lotte Unimpeded, and Thinking Creator no longer directly or indirectly holds the equity of Cool Teen.

It should be noted that since Luo Zhenyu, chairman of Thinking Creation, holds 30.35% of the shares of Lotte Unimpeded, after the equity penetration, Luo Zhenyu still indirectly holds 12.78% of the equity of Cool Boy. In this regard, Thinking Creation said that after March 26, 2019, the actual business decisions of Cool Teen have been dominated by Zhang Quanling, and it cannot affect the business strategies such as the promotion and delivery of Kude Junior.

Where is the difficulty in listing the creator of thinking? The industry is highly competitive and its performance depends on personal IP

According to the latest version of the prospectus of Thinking Creation, from 2018 to the first half of 2021, the company achieved operating income of 738 million yuan, 628 million yuan, 675 million yuan and 439 million yuan, and the net profit attributable to the shareholders of the parent company was 53.2976 million yuan, 117 million yuan, 40.0635 million yuan and 28.6367 million yuan.

At present, the listed company that is most similar to the positioning of the creation of thinking and whose main business is knowledge payment is the knowledge of the US stock market. Shell financial reporter combed and found that according to the published data, Zhihu achieved operating income of 1.352 billion yuan in 2020, but the net profit loss was 518 million yuan; in contrast, although the revenue of Thinking Creation in 2020 was just half of Zhihu, but the profit was not lost, according to the data of the first half of 2021 and the positive expectation of Thinking Creation for the full year of 2021 revenue in the reply letter, its profit for the whole year of 2021 was not a high probability event, and although the operating income of Zhihu in 2021 reached 2.959 billion yuan, the net profit loss was also as high as 1.299 billion yuan.

Although the financial data is not bad, it should be noted that the creation of thinking will face more and more fierce competition in the same industry.

According to the 2021 China Knowledge Payment Platform Ranking released by China Business Intelligence, Zhihu, Himalaya, Tencent Classroom, Dragonfly FM, and Fan Deng reading ranked in the top 5, ranking only 12th.

In addition, thinking creation is also facing the food grabbing of B station, vibrato and other enterprises.

In 2019, Station B opened the internal test of paid courses; in 2020, Station B launched a new level of partition "Knowledge Area", and public data shows that in 2021, 183 million users have learned on Station B, and this contains a lot of free content. At the end of 2021, Douyin also launched a "learning channel", and public data shows that the playback volume of pan-knowledge content on the Douyin platform in 2021 increased by 74% year-on-year, and the playback of pan-knowledge content accounted for 20% of the total playback volume of the platform.

At the same time, Ms. Liu, who paid to learn on multiple platforms such as Zhihu, Station B, Get, And Himalaya, told Shell Financial Reporter that for the learning of audio, she is more accustomed to learning on Get and Himalaya, and the content of text is mostly in Zhihu, while the learning of video is in Station B.

Bu Naxin, vice president of the Science and Technology Industry Investment Branch of the China Association for the Promotion of Science and Technology and executive director of the Strategic Investment Think Tank, said publicly that the current market pattern of the lifelong education industry in the mainland is relatively scattered, and there has not yet been a phenomenon of giant monopoly and oligopolistic competition. With the continuous innovation and iteration of Internet information technology and the popularization of 5G networks, the content and expression forms disseminated by audio, short video, long video, live broadcast and other media continue to upgrade and iterate, and market competition will also intensify.

In addition, how to put the egg in the basket of Luo Zhenyu's IP and get rid of the dependence of celebrity IP is also something that needs to be considered when the listing of thinking creations. According to the prospectus data, from 2018 to the end of June 2021, the project income of Luo Zhenyu was 57.6314 million yuan, 48.7778 million yuan, 65.6338 million yuan and 47.7609 million yuan, respectively, which accounted for about 20% of the total revenue.

Previously, Wu Xiaobo's Bajiuling (Hangzhou Bajiuling Cultural and Creative Co., Ltd.) wanted to go public in 2019 on the help of the all-access education curve of listed companies, but failed. In fact, when All Access Education released the restructuring plan, it emphasized that the target company had "Wu Xiaobo's personal dependence risk" and "the target company's actual controller future non-compete risk". In order to eliminate the traces of Wu Xiaobo's personal IP in the company, it also renamed the public account "Wu Xiaobo Channel" to "890 New Business", but the restructuring and listing process ended in failure, after which Bajiuling began to prepare for an independent IPO, but there is still no result.

Fan Deng, the founder of Fan Deng Reading, said in an interview with the media, "We are taking the route of normal IP, but what you are worried about or anxious about is why there is no second IP born." ”

In the prospectus, Thinking Creator admitted that Luo Zhenyu was the founder and chairman of the company, and also the only speaker in the New Year's Eve speech event and the main speaker of the Inspiration Club. Although the content of the New Year's Eve speech and the Inspiration Club is jointly created by the company's curriculum research and development team, there is a certain degree of dependence on Luo Zhenyu in the promotion and organization of activities, "If Mr. Luo Zhenyu no longer participates in the company's business promotion or New Year's Eve speech, Inspiration Club and other activities in the future, the company's business development may be affected to a certain extent." ”

Beijing News shell financial reporter Luo Yidan Editor Yue Caizhou Proofreader Fu Chunyan